Isabelle Kerr, winner of Best Blog for Fifty Shades of Grey – Saviour of Relationships or Abuser’s Handbook?

Over the festive break, we’ll be sharing reflections from each of our 2015 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards winners which were originally published in the National Newspaper on 11 December 2015.

ON Thursday it was my 60th birthday, so receiving this award was a lovely present.

Turning 60 made me think about the ways I’d been writing and putting out information over the years, since the beginning of the 1980s in fact.

Blogging is a great way to communicate and so widely available to all of us.

There are many people out there contributing pieces on all aspects of violence against women and it’s growing, so that the voices of survivors of gender-based violence and abuse, and those of us who work in this field, need not be silenced any longer.

The online world is so often seen as the domain of the vicious, vitriolic troll and that is exactly why we must keep shouting out our message, that violence against women is not acceptable and must end.

I was very lucky to be in the company of other writers who had also been honoured with awards for their excellent articles and investigative pieces, and it was a good feeling to know that the torch is burning brightly and survivors of abuse will not be silenced or consigned to the darkness.